Room 109

I had a series of roommates over the semesters, none of which would stay the whole time.  Daria tried twice, but never made it a full semester.  Her seizures were too severe.  She collapsed on campus twice and ended up being put in the hospital, waking up each time in the Psych. Ward.  The Doctors did not know what to do with her.  She would call her parents and they would come and get her out.  I had a roommate who was recovering from Anorexia and had a psycho boyfriend.  She didn’t last long either.  My last semester my assigned roommate didn’t show up, again.  So I lived most of my time in room 109 there by myself.

My first semester there, I had been there about two weeks, when the homesickness, the loneliness, and the feeling of being abandoned just became overwhelming.  I went to see my dorm mother.  She asked me a question I pondered for most of my college years.  She said, “Why are you here?”  I couldn’t answer her.  I didn’t know.  I went to college, because that is what I was told to do.  I had no idea what I wanted in life, and no idea what would happened to me after I graduated.  I fumbled around in the dark, and finally found my way.  After understand the rigors of a life in the food industry and that I didn’t want to run my own restaurant or become a chef, I fell in love with Sociology, mainly because of my professor Dr. Sarah.  When she came in one class dragging an imaginary pink elephant, she had me hooked.  The moral of that story is that even if it not real, and I think it is, it has an effect on all those that interact with me.

It took a while, but I began to make friends.  Many who’s pictures I have, and don’t remember their names, Meg Landry from Abbeville, the girl at the front desk of my dorm from Africa, Debra Fowler and her friend David, and the immortal Gamboa brothers from Paraguay. 

Life on the halls was interesting.  We would all sit in the floor and drink, smoke, eat, and play Skipbo till 2 in the morning.  My neighbors became my friends.  I met my first Jewish person, who lived down the hall.  She converted to Druidry, that was the first time I ever heard the word.  I had nothing to do with that.  Some of the ladies were afraid of bugs and would call me to kill them for them.

Bancroft dorm had a twin, which sat just a hundred feet from it.  It was called Denbo.  I got to know the girls on the first floor there.  Many of them were blind, and several had guide dogs.  I fell in with the ladies.  One lady, Alison and I became pretty close.  She was in my math class, which I was of course failing.  Trying to explain Algebraic equations to a blind person is very hard, worse when you make a mistake.  Many times, if Alison did not have her cane, I would guide her.  She would put her hand on her shoulder and we would walk.

I would read the blind ladies textbooks to them, until they arrived on tape.  One of the ladies had a guide dog.  She had lost her eyes as a child, and had glass eyes.  Every now and again she would look at me and say, “Hey are my eyes straight?”  If they were not, she would knock herself in the side of her head until her eyes were centered.  Weird, but it worked.  She was an awesome crocheter.  One year she gave me a cross bookmark she had crocheted.  I have long since rid myself of all Bibles and Christian things in my house.  But I kept that bookmark, as a reminder of a friend who’s name I don’t even remember. 

When I first went to live in South Louisiana it is a bit of a culture shock.  I had to convince most of the young ladies from South Louisiana, that I was from Louisiana as well, even thought I was not Catholic, did not speak French, and talked funny.  One told me, “Oh you are from up in the hills.”  It never occurred to me that North Louisiana was hilly compared to the flat lands of South Louisiana.  I kept a map in my room of Louisiana and a blown up sections of where I was from.  So I could show people.  Most of them did not consider Shreveport to be part of Louisiana.  

I have talked before about my love for Jeff Foxworthy, who was just making it big about that time.  Jeff, bless him, took the power out of the word Redneck, by helping people laugh at it, we reclaimed it as ours.  This word, that had been used as a slur when I was growing up, and was not said in polite company.  I decided to become the “Redneck Ambassador” to USL.  I even printed up a sign and put it on my dorm room door.  I educated others, on the differences between our two cultures.  It was all very tongue and cheek. 

Now everyone in South Louisiana is Catholic.  Even if you are not Catholic, you are Catholic.  You learn to do all the little idiosyncratic things that Catholics do, from years of training, without even knowing it.  I was riding on the USL bus one day, going to the sports complex.  We passed by church and suddenly everyone, without saying a word to each other, crossed themselves.  It was the weirdest thing.  I had to ask and was later told that yes everyone crossed themselves going past a church, because that is where the Eucharist was held.  The part that is not used, is place in an ornate box.  Because it has already been transformed into the body of Jesus, it is considered holy or sacred.  When people pass by the church, they make the sign of the cross, in acknowledgement of the sacredness of this. 

Other Catholic things crept into my life.  My blind girl-friends in Denbo, taught me to say the Rosary.  Some of them prayed to a particular Saint that their sight would be restored.  When Palm Sunday came, you took a palm home, and kept it as good luck.  I learned to cross myself when I passed the church, so no one would know I was not Catholic and look at me funny.  There is a lot of discrimination there, if you are not, just like I encountered in Ebarb, many years later.  You crossed yourself when a funeral went past.  You took a knee before you got in the church pew.  You celebrated Mardi Gras, whether you were Catholic or not.  Then you gave up something during lent, and ate fish on Fridays.  I never noticed till I came home that most small restaurants that serve lunches,  serve fried fish on Fridays, whether it is Lent or not. 

Most people spoke a little French or their grandparents did.  Their parents would speak in French when they didn’t want them to know what they were talking about.  I learned quickly about the language, although I can’t speak it, except for a few things.  I noticed everyone kept calling me “Chei,” and “Boo.”  I remember calling my Dad and saying, “I don’t know why but everyone keeps calling me Cher and saying Boo, and it’s not Halloween yet.”  My father explained that they were love names.

I learned about Catholicism.  I also learned about the food.  All food in South Louisiana is hot, a holdover from the Spanish, who got it from the tribes.  Hot food makes you sweat, when you sweat you are cooler.  Something you needed before AC was so prevalent.  Even the pizza sauce was hot.  And you never said something was hot, NOOOO!  You always said it was, “Well seasoned.”  I came home with an accent and a taste for hot food. 

Part of the reason I was at USL was I had two aunts who could watch over me.  One was a great Aunt, I think I saw her a few times I was down there.  The other was my Aunt Cathy and Uncle Cliff.  Now follow me on this one.  Uncle Cliff had been college roommates with my biological father, Beau.  We kept in touch with Aunt Cathy and them, after my parents divorced.  They were originally going to be my Godparents.  Aunt Cathy and Uncle Cliff have 4 daughters all with C names.  It was Aunt Cathy and her family that helped take care of me while I was at USL.  You know took me to the grocery store, called to check on me, let me do laundry at her house.

Aunt Cathy’s youngest daughters are identical twins, Cattie and Callie.  They were about 3 my first year in college.  Oh I loved both of them so much, and they loved me!  They were the light of my life!  One of the worst things about leaving USL was leaving them.  I loved going to the store and people thought they were mine.  I got to pretend for just a minute.  They even helped me pick out the fabric for the curtains in my dorm rom.  I was still hurting from things that had happened my senior year, the Brett Incident and my friends not talking to me.  I will always feel that the twins helped heal me, with the immense amount of joy they gave me. 

In the Fall of 1994 I was told my Wesley group would be taking a trip to Saint Louis for an Ecumenical Christian gathering the week after Christmas.  I was asked if I wanted to go.  It was a lot of money and I was not sure.  I was spending the weekend with Alison in her home in Crowley.  We had gone to mass and we were sitting in church.  Now Alison could see light and shadows but nothing else.  I told her I was looking for a sign, to decide if I should go or not.  She said she saw light come from where the Eucharist is kept and it touched me.  That for me was sign enough. 

I left after Christmas and rode with my minister, and 4 of college buddies.  I was the only woman in the group.  It took us 16 hours to reach St. Louis.  I had a wonderful time at the conference.  I even went to the top of the arch.  It was at this conference that I met Mike. 

I tried to balance my relationship with Mike with school.  I had been failing, long before I got involved with Mike, and not for lack of studying or trying.  Although I had graduated High School with honors, I was not prepared for USL.  I would not know for many years that NSU had originally offered me a full ride to school there.  Because I was so dead set on USL, my guidance councilor never told me about it.

There is one more story I want to tell you about USL.  Mike was a music major and told me that most colleges have a choir that members of the local community can sing in.  I joined.  I loved it.  I practiced all semester to sing in one of the local cathedrals.  I missed two classes and was told I had to make it up in a private session with my professor.  It was then he learned my secret.  I can’t read music.  Still can’t.  Years later I tried to have Mike teach me and that failed miserably. 

Twice, my professor told me to hit a specific note, and played it on the piano.  I couldn’t do it.  He told me that he had always heard me something strange coming out of my alto section, but couldn’t figure out what it was.  Turns out it was me.  I sing with others by listening to them, to know what note I should be singing.  He told me I had two choices.  I could quit or I could lip sync our concert at the cathedral.  I chose to lip sync.  I could not let all that work go to waste.  He told me something that has stayed with me.  He said, “All people can sing.  Some shouldn’t.  Your one of them.” 

I lip sang ¾ of the concert, and the last quarter I just sang my little heart out.  What was he going to do, flunk me.  I was already failing and leaving to go to NSU after that semester.  What could he possibly do to me!

I have always thought if I ever made an album I would call it, “Shouldn’t sing.”  I’ve got my music playing while I have been writing this, and another Jimmy Buffett just load up.  Think I will crank this one and sing myself out.  Oh it’s one of my favorites, Bob Robert’s Society Band.

A lady dressed in purple started dancing all alone,

Then she sauntered oh so gently to the vacant microphone.

She sounded like she’s someone who never missed a beat,

By the time the number ended they were dancing in the street.

 

Ilsa

 

 

 

USL

I gradated Logansport High School in May of 1994, which I talked about in The healing power of music.  Within a few weeks I started working at the McDonald’s in Center, Texas.  My town had little work, and what jobs there were, were taken up by others in our town.  I drove almost 30 miles round trip to work there.  Let’s just say I learned a lot about working, and what was legal and what was not.  It was definitely interesting to say the least. 

One of the managers was having an affair with one of the cooks.  They like to make love on the washing machine, when it was going.  He was 18 or 19, she was married with small children.  At night the managers would make us clock out at midnight, then lock the door, and not let us leave until the place was clean, usually till 2 or 3 in the morning.  If you walked out, you lost your job.  The idea was that they were supposed to be done by midnight and the store was to be clean.  If corporate found out that it wasn’t, my managers would have been in trouble.  I had no idea until later that this practice was illegal.  I worked for McDonald’s until a few weeks before it was time for me to leave for USL.

I had an experience there that has stuck with me as I became Pagan.  My manager told me to trust my gut, that money and all things were replaceable, but we were not, to trust my instincts.  If I ever had a situations where we were afraid, to simply back up and get him.  I had a man come in one day, my guess is it was close to Summer Solstice.  He was dressed in a black robe, I think, and had a huge pentacle around his neck.  My immediate thought was “Satan worshiper!” even though his pentacle was pointed up and not down.  I didn’t know the difference back then.  I backed up, and got my manager.  Who served him beautifully. 

As I have become pagan I have thought of this man.  I have no idea who he was, and in 10 years of being in this community, I have never encountered him again.  But I want to apologize for what I did.  Now I see him as simply a Pagan man, trying to get something to eat.  I see myself as the ignorant and stupid one.  I am ashamed of my actions, and hope where ever he is, he would know how that one act still has an effect on me.

In late August of 1994 I prepared to leave for college.  The day I left, we boarded my little Schnauzer, Sugar, at the vet.  She had been acting weird for a few weeks.  To our surprise while we were gone, she delivered 7 puppies, 2 who lived.  We adopted one out and kept the other.  We named her Sissy, she would be part of my life for more than 10 years.  Six weeks after I went to college by beloved friend and dog Texas died.  He was about 10.  Now the vet said he died of Hepatitis C, which he guessed Texas got from eating something dead.  I still believe he died of a broken heart. 

I planned for weeks on what to bring, trying to decide on which books to bring was almost painful.  I took pictures of my family to hang on my wall when I got there.  One of my grandmothers, I don’t remember which one, bought me new linens for my bed.  One of them gave me a small old refrigerator to take me.  My parents drove me down to Lafayette.  My first dorm room was on the 5^th floor of Bancroft.  I put all my things on one side of the room, waiting for a roommate that never came.  When my parents left, and the door closed I had never felt so alone in my life.  I felt like a stranger in a strange land.  I decorated my room and took pictures.  The sound of the wind was very creepy, as was the sound of people I did not know talking in the rooms next to me, and going up and down the halls all hours of the night.  They had no respect for others.  I was there to work, not party.

We were met at my dorm by Rev. Don Ross who was the Campus Minister at the Wesley Foundation for USL.  Part of their ministry was to assist those moving in.  They brought dollies and strong backs.  Bancroft had elevators, because it was 7 stories tall.  I sure missed that elevator when I moved to NSU.  We had to carry everything by hand up stairs.  Not fun.  My father took me to the campus ministry after we finished unpacking and talked with Don a while.  He asked him to watch over me, and that is where they left me. 

I became very active in the Campus Ministry there, for a time, even running an Interfaith Campus Ministry.  I was just trying to get the Catholics, Methodist, and Assembly of God to work together.  It all fell apart when they built a Mosque just off of campus and the Muslims wanted to join our group.  It worked for a while, and then I resigned.  It didn’t last long after that. 

I stayed in my 5^th floor dorm room for a few weeks.  Then I met Daria.  She was from Parks, but she had family in Butte La Rose.  It took her 2 days to convince me she was not a French national.  She asked me to move down to her room on the first floor.  I had no idea that the first floor even had rooms.  But it did, about 9 of them.  They were designed for the physically handicapped students.  Daria had severe seizures.  She was allergic to the medications they had tried to treat her with.  One time she had 7 seizures in one day.  I had experience and knowledge dealing with seizures.  We decided we were a good fit.  So I moved down to room 109.  I would stay in that room for the next two years, until I left for NSU. 

Ilsa

 

*Bancroft and Denbo were demolished in the last few years to make way for a new student housing complex. 

The Brett Incident

I had spent much of my teenage years wanting to be an Oceanographer, like Dr. Bob Ballard.  I even ran my bath scalding hot, so I might prepare for diving in the hot water around the underwater volcanoes.  When I tried to get into LSMSA, see Cold Hands, I had to take the SAT’s.  I began to understand I was smart, but not that smart.  Math is the bane of my existence.  I also began to understand I would have to leave the state to study, something I was not prepared to do.  I did not want to leave my family.  I also did not want to leave the area, go away, build a life, get married, have kids, own a home, and have to give up everything many years later, to come home and care for aging and dying parents.  I am an only child.  I don’t get the luxury of handing it off to another family member.  It is going to be me, doing it all, in the end.  I was brought up to believe you do not put your loved ones in a nursing home.  It is dishonorable and distasteful. 

So I knew I could not be an Oceanographer, although I loved writing, I figured I could never make a living at it, besides I knew I wasn’t very good at it.  I knew people who could write circles around me.  I didn’t want to be a teacher like my mom was working on becoming, and two of my Aunts were already.  I didn’t want to be a nurse like my other Aunt.  I had been training in the wifely arts of cooking, cleaning, sewing, and hand work since I could remember.  My mom always said she wanted to prepare me.  So I thought I am a pretty good cook and I love food, maybe I will be a chef, so that is what I started out going to college to do.  I was also in love with the Frugal Gourmet about this time.

As my senior year approached I began to look at colleges.  My father then stepped in and said, “You may only apply to colleges where I may get to you in less than a day’s drive.”  That sealed the deal, no Oceanography for me.  I remember measuring off the distance and marking my large US map with my compass and setting up the radius.  I decided to apply in state.  I asked, my family, for help filling out the forms for both financial aid and college applications, they refused.  It taught me how to do them though.  I always found it odd some colleges required you send a picture.  What the hell did that tell them about your brain or who you were???  I applied all over the state: to Northwestern in Natchitoches, LSU in Baton Rouge, USL in Lafayette, Louisiana Tech in Ruston, NLU in Monroe, Southeastern in Hammond, and McNeese in Lake Charles.  I got in to all of them.  I was very surprised I got into LSU, but I did. 

I was so ecstatic when my letter came from Louisiana Tech that I had been accepted.  My entire life my father had told me, “You’re going to college.”  I never had a say in it.  I wanted to go to Tech, desperately, like my father before me.  I have always wanted to be just like my Dad.  I still remember going into the living room to tell him.  He held the letter and said, “That’s great, but you can’t go there.  You will have no one to watch over you.  You can go to NSU, where you Mom is attending, and she can watch other you, or you can go to USL where your aunt can watch over you.”  I was devastated.  All that work, applying to all the other colleges, only to be told, again that what I wanted, didn’t matter.  I am sure he had his reasons, but he broke my heart that day.  Still makes me angry to this day.

I thought for a moment.  I wanted to get as far away from my mother as possible, and I knew others from my school were going to NSU.  I was terrified the bullying would continue there, so I said, “I guess I will go to USL then.” 

USL became my battle cry, it became my hope, and thinking of going there and getting away from the daily abuse, which was only getting worse now that Cajun Rink had been added to he bunch, became my refuge.  Cajun helped crank the daily taunts up to 11.  But I was trying so hard to be a good Christian and turn the other cheek, and to do what my parents asked.  But with every word he hurled at me, I died inside.  He even went so far as to paint penis on my car windows, in shoe polish. I am still thankful for the cheerleaders who helped me remove enough from my window, to drive home, with spit and a Kleenex, and held me while I cried.

Into my life came Brett.  He was beautiful or so I thought.  He had this long curly black mullet.  He was of Native American decent, and covered in pimples.  I didn’t care.  I was on him like white on rice.  He was fresh meat and I wanted him.  In my mind he had not been tainted by my tormentors.  So it was game on.  He was from Shreveport.  He was always crying, come to find out his father had recently died.  His mother had remarried.  She and her new husband had moved to Keatchie.  Brett and I became fast friends.  I was always trying to comfort him, rubbing his back and trying to help him through this difficult time. 

As I sit here looking at my annual, I don’t know that we were ever officially boyfriend and girlfriend.  I was invited to a bonfire at his house.  Our parents met and they liked each other.  They encourage us to be together.  I went to a Christmas party at his house, where he danced with me.  He gave me a cassette single of Dwight Yoakam’s “Fast as you.”  I spent hours listening to it, to see if Brett was trying to give me a secret message.  I hate that song now, it reminds me of all of this.

Brett was strange.  He spent hours on his hair and although it was my guess he liked me, he didn’t want to hold my hand, and kissed me only once.  When he kissed me it was not like Adam’s kisses, full of passion and want.  No it was like kissing a rock.  I was confused.  I liked him, was falling in love with him, but he did not seem to reciprocate.  I knew, deep down, it was going to be another one of my one sided love affairs.  I often fell “In love” with a guy and then waited for him to say he liked me, even tried to buddy up to some of them, but none of them ever got the hint.  So it was always on sided.

Brett, me and our families went out New Years Eve to the American Legion Hall dance.  Brett was prone to migraines.  He had one that night.  I would learn later he faked it to get away from me. 

Not long after we were due to give blood.  I talked all my friends into doing it.  It ended up that I could not because had an ear infection and was on antibiotics.  Brett, Sonya and some more of my friends gave blood.  A few weeks later Brett received a letter, or so I was told, that said he had a devastating medical condition.  I wrote him a letter and told him how much I loved him and I would stay beside him through this diagnosis.

Within a few days later I was given a note from him, by Sonya, he said wanted nothing to do with me anymore.  I was devastated.  For once in my life, I thought I had found love.  I have always said the worst thing about all of this, was that for a few weeks, I had hope that I was not this horrible, ugly, fat, crazy monster that everyone told me I was.  When I read his letter, all that hope was destroyed.

It was not just the relationship that hurt, what did the most damage is what came after.  Sonya, my best friend since 2^nd grade, was also friends with Brett.  What I didn’t know, is that many nights that I was on the phone with Brett, she was quietly listening in.  He had called her, before he called me.  I didn’t know until later that she was acting as a conduit to help get him hooked up to another friend, who Brett began dating a few weeks later.

This friend he dated, a few months later, when the relationship was over, turned to me in class and said, “He lies doesn’t he?”  I said, “Yes he does.” 

I still do not know what was said.  I don’t know what rumor was spread, but from the time that Brett broke up with me in January of 1994 until about a month before I graduated in May of 1995, I was basically shunned.  Suddenly none of my friends, or anyone for that matter, would speak to me.  No one would eat lunch with me.  I was treated like a pariah.  My only clue is what one friend said to me one day.  He had the courage to break whatever taboo they had set against me.  He said, “They have told me to hate you and I just can’t do it anymore.  You have always been nice to me.”  And he sat with me and ate lunch.  It was finally over.  He was the first, more would join us as they year drew to a close. 

I cannot tell you how desperate I was.  I cannot tell you how many nights I wanted to kill myself.  How I wanted to jump from the river bridge.  In one swoop I had lost everything I understood.  My people, my tribe, my friends, or however you want to call it.  My sociology professor years later, would call it a “social death.”  When I finally got up the courage to talk to my parents, tell them what was going on and I was suicidal, my Dad said, “Oh It’s just puppy love.  It will pass.”  Twenty-Two years later it hurts, almost as bad as it did when it happened.  At least I now have some understanding to go with all of this.

I stayed friends with Brett’s parents.  I have seen his mother several times over the years.  When I saw her, I told her all that had happened, and she confirmed for me what I had begun to suspect many years before.  Brett was gay.  I now understand what he did.  He used me for cover.  He was pretending to be interested in me to appease his family and hide his homosexuality.  That I could have lived with, and would have even happily participated in it had I known. 

I found Brett many years ago on Facebook, we discussed much of the above.  To say he has a different idea of what happened is an understatement.  He said we were never in a relationship and he never cared for me, that he has always been gay.  I am sure there is much truth to that.  I have known for a long time what I felt for him, was not reciprocated.  I had hoped for an apology, but that will never happened.  Never got one from Sonya either or knew what was actually said about me.  Would love to know now, if someone wanted to PM me, I would be open to hearing it now.  Ten years, after all this, I would see Sonya again.  Who just hugged my neck and could not understand why I was so mad at her.  What a Bitch!

While all this was going on, all I could do was pray and count the days until I would go to USL.  I was in Hell and I had to find my own way out.  I was like Rapunzel.  I was trapped in the tower, no one was coming to save me, I had to cut my hair and save myself. 

There was a young man in my class who came in everyday, with the most beautiful smile.  As corny as it sounds his smile, gave me hope.  Seeing him smile, and hearing him laugh helped me in ways he has no idea of.  I even developed a little crush on him, but my fate was sealed and I was too broken and afraid to try to find love again.  I was leaving for Lafayette after I graduated, and that was that.

I began what I called “Smile Therapy.”  I would force myself to smile, just for a few seconds every few hours.  I noticed when I did so I would feel better.  Turns out smiling releases all kinds of endorphins in your brain, that are good for you.  Slowly, ever so slowly I feel it began to pull me out of the worst of my depression.  The first few weeks were the worst.  I would get two or three seconds and then burst into tears again.  I cried so much during class, during this whole thing, me a woman who hates to cry and used to see it as a sign of weakness. 

A few weeks before we graduated someone told me something I would never have dreamed.  They said, “Melvin has been in love with you for years.  He would have done anything for you.”  I remember sitting in our drafting room, looking at him and just smiling.  I have no idea if it was even true, but it helped me none the less.  And today I regret not doing anything about it.  The idea that Melvin had once loved me, along with my friends smile, gave me comfort in one of the darkest times of my life.  Stupid and corny, right?  I know.  But I love stupid and corny. 

Ilsa

 

 

 

 

 

The family secret

No family is perfect.  Every family has secrets.  Every family has demons.  My new family’s secret, besides they were dysfunctional, was that all the men were a bunch of drunks.  My father Jef, and both his brothers, just like their father and grandfather before them.  We can trace alcoholism back several generations in our family.  It was simply the way we handled our problems.  Now in my Dad’s defense he was never a mean drunk, unless he was on the hard stuff and Mom told him he could not have that in the house early on.  It is not my intention to shame my father into going to AA.  I simply want you to understand that being an adult child of an alcoholic is also part of my story.  It is nothing to be ashamed of, it is just fact for many of us.  I want you to see my father as I do, wonderful, intelligent, funny, loving, heroic and flawed. 

My Dad is what is called a Binge Alcoholic.  He would go a week or two of being sober and then pull a big drunk.  He once told me it took him at least a 6 pack to feel anything, and a good case before he got drunk.  Now you have to remember my Daddy is a big man, he is 5’11 and about 300lb.  And as a kid a lot of that was muscle.  Daddy is a happy drunk.  When he drinks he wants to dance and would put on his Motown records.  He would contemplate putting on his Barbara Streisand albums, and then he would say, “You know I love her voice, but I just hate her politics.”  Daddy is a dyed in the wool, Fox News loving, gun caring, Conservative Republican.  He is the definition of a good old boy and I love him for it.  All though he has never been homophobic and believes in a woman’s right to chose. 

I would inevitable get sick with Bronchitis and be on the couch with my vaporizer.  He would get drunk and come in wanting to hang out with me, drink and play music.  We passed many nights like that.  Later in my life I would share a glass of beer with him on these nights. 

My Dad’s brothers were his very best friends.  His middle brother, Drew and Ashley’s father, died a few years back.  He has really grieved his death.   I think he lost one of his real reasons for drinking, hanging out with his brother.  I also think he lost his best friend.  I remember the days of my uncles all standing around Daddy’s truck, drinking.  Each one took a side.  They had a cooler in the middle and they would talk late into the night, especially if the weather was good.  Sometimes I would go hang out with them, and listen to their stories. 

My personal favorite story is when Daddy would not come home.  Now this was in the days before cell phones kids.  We would call all over tarnation for him.  We would finally find him at one of his brother’s houses.  Daddy would get on the phone and say, “Yeh baby I’ll be home in about 30 minutes.  I’m going to drink one more beer.”  He’d show up 4 hours later.  I always knew when he was drinking ‘cause when he came home to kiss me, his lips were cold. 

Mom tried for the first few years to fight this.  We went to Ala-non trying to convince him that he should join AA. Mom never got that the program was for her.  We left the Big Book around for him to read.  That never happened.  She would have dinner hot on the table and ready for him when he came home.  We would wait, until long after he said he would be home.  Finally it would get cold, and it would be late, and we would be tired of waiting and we would have to give in and eat without him.   Mom finally quit that after a while and when she knew he was drinking, we would just go ahead, have dinner and go on with our evening plans.  I think she learned somewhere in there to just let him be.

No matter how drunk my Dad or my uncles got, every morning they got up and went to work.  They never called in for a hangover.  I think it comes from all those years of having had the dairy.  They had a hell of a work ethic.  No matter what they did the night before, come 3 o’clock in the morning them cows had to be milked regardless of how you felt or the weather.  People and animals were depending on you. 

My Daddy taught me to love books.  He eats books.  He can read a book in a day if you let him.  He probable reads 2 or 3 books a week.  He is very much like Jay in that fact and I love it.  They like many of the same books and often trade them back and forth, and introduce each other to new authors.  I don’t do that.  Yes I am a book worm, but I read for detail and often with a highlighter.  I like my mother prefer non-fiction.  I used to love fiction, but it is hard to find an educated, animal and livestock loving, country witchy woman who is not in bed with the hero by page 4 and is in command of her own life.  I am still looking for good authors.  I had hoped to be a fiction writer, but I am just no good a plot lines.  Stories don’t have endings, they just meander and change, like this paragraph.

I will never forget the first time Daddy took me to the library in Logansport.  I had never seen so many books, and the idea that you could read any of them you wanted just fascinated me.  I am still in love with libraries and book stores. I was still young enough and light enough to be picked up.  Daddy sat me on the counter and said, “Hey y’all watch her for just a minute.  I’ve got to get a few books.”   And they did.  Libraries frown upon such things now.  

My library was tiny. My little trailer probable has more square footage then that library did.  But it was a beacon and outpost of the world beyond for me.  Daddy and I would go and I would just get lost in the books. I also loved the librarians.  They were knowledgeable on so many subjects. If they didn’t know they either had a book they could recommend, had one they could get for you, or had a vertical file (news clippings) on that subject.  They were like compasses.  They could always point you in the right direction.

I was always a good student, but my Dad demanded excellence out of me.  Homework was a priority, and to be done right after school and my snack.  My parents helped where they could.  Math was always my weakest subject and I suspect that along with my ADD I have Dyscalculia as well.  I am always turning numbers around, not letters, unless I am really tired.  I remember bringing home my grades and C’s went on the top, then B’s and then A’s.  Didn’t matter how many A’s you had.  You were going to be fussed about the C’s.  Daddy told me an A is an A, a B is like a C, and a C is like an F.  And when he was done fussing and me about my grades or my report card, then it was time for my Grandpa, Novelle, and my uncles to fuss me about them.  High grades and great things were expected out of me.  I often feel guilty that I have disappointed them. 

So the feeling of never being good enough, never measuring up, and striving for perfection were drilled into me from an early age.  My guess is the family hoped by doing so, I would not have to live the way they did.  Instead it made me self conscious, and terrified of disappointing them.  I still feel that way.

I knew from an early age my family expected me to go to college, just like my Dad and his brothers had.  My Grandpa was a “self made man,” and had left school at about 16 or 17 to go to sea.  We all believed the lie that if I went to college I would have a better life.  Go study what you love.  You can be anything you want to be, they told us.  I just wanted to be a Mom, but that was not good enough for anybody.  So I was encouraged to study.   I am naturally pretty smart, so I did good in school.  I excelled and won awards, but I was never smart enough to get into our gifted and talented program.  That’s what I always wanted, but it didn’t happen.  I had the grades but not the test scores.  I am not the best tester.  I have too much anxiety about the time aspect.  You know back in the day before you could get a waiver for such things. 

What we should be telling our kids, is that long before they decide what they want to be in school, they should decide where they want to live.  If you are a woman and a want to live in Louisiana it is best you do something in the medical field or teaching.  Despite what you may want, these are really the only two industries that want to hire women.  Even today there is little else for women here.  If you are a man and want to live here, you must have a strong back and be willing to work long hours.  What work there is for people here, is not what we would called skilled.  People who wish to live in Northwest Louisiana should also consider a trade: electrical work, truck driver, plumbing, contracting, mechanic, dog grooming, vet tech, etc.  Nothing that requires you to have a 4 year or more degree.  Even people we educate here, cannot get work here. 

If you do feel such an urge to obtain a college degree, you need to go ahead and be ready to leave this state for work in another place.  Louisiana puts no stock in it’s young people and there is nothing here for us but heartache, and trying to scratch a living out of the dirt.  It is always feast or famine around here.  When I was a kid there were plenty of jobs in the oil field, most of the fields are played out now.  Even the great boom of the Haynesville Shale is almost over with. 

It is simply a fact of life here.  Our smart and different people must move away to make a life for themselves in places like Dallas, Austin, or Houston.  No one comes to Louisiana, except New Orleans, (and that might as well be Mars for all most Louisianans care) voluntarily.  If you are in Louisiana you are here for a few reasons.  You are from here and got stuck here.  You came home for family.  You married someone from here.  You got stationed here.  My prayer is may you never be smart, and stuck in Louisiana. 

As for me, why did I stayed?  I got stuck, and I stayed to be close to my family.  I am an only child and know I will be the only one to care for my parents as they age.  Why move away, have a life, home and career and know I would have sell it all to come home and take care of my family?  As much as I talk smack about Louisiana I am also very much in love with it.  No, not the Louisiana you see on post cards, books and television.  I am in love with North Louisiana, all it’s terrible and wonderful flaws.  I love it’s people, who are warm and giving, as long as you are a certain type of person.  Even if you are not, they would give you the shirt off their back, and hope they could lead you to the Lord. 

I feel in love with the towering pine trees, the wild flowers, the muddy red waters of the river, the deer, the possum, and the armadillo.  I feel in love with the green pastures of Keatchie, its stately old buildings, and its Holstein cows.  I even love the smell of cow shit on a warm day.  It smells like home to me.   I love Louisiana in all her seasons: hot, warm, cool, and back to warm again.  I even love it here when it is 110° with 90% humidity.  Louisiana gets in your blood.  It is in my blood, my family has been here for so long now.  What every way you want to trace my family tree, my family has been here for more generations that anyone cares to count. 

Yes I have lived in larger cities, and I like the slow path of life here.  Like my Dad, passing time standing around his truck, drinking beer, visiting with his family and watching the world go by.  Does it get any better than that?

I must say though I hate our state government.  Most of them are so crooked, and have screwed the Louisiana population and land so much, “They are going to have to screw them in the ground when they die.”  I hope, above all hope that with each passing election, my state will get better and a little less screwed.  Never happens.  I guess I will eventually have to give up that ghost.

Ilsa